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The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Premieres Sunday Sept. 17 on PBS.

Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I don't think I can watch this. His civil war documentary I found to be profoundly sad and melancholy. I can only imagine how this comes off.
 
G

gdt

Member
Y2Kev said:
I don't think I can watch this. His civil war documentary I found to be profoundly sad and melancholy. I can only imagine how this comes off.
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It's so good! A little too much southern love shit but that was the time I guess. Foote got a hard on halfway through.

Edit: Watch The Roosevelts! Not as melancholy.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Can't wait, I love Ken Burns and I'm excited about the subject matter and the scope.

gdt said:
It's so good! A little too much southern love shit but that was the time I guess. Foote got a hard on halfway through.
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He gives me vibes of someone who try to carefully gauge if you're okay with a white person saying n-word.
 
S

Shadybiz

Member
Oh wow, thanks for the thread; I had no idea! My knowledge of the Vietnam war is sorely lacking, so definitely will check this out.
 
S

Spike Spiegel

Member
Swimmer9800 said:
is there anywhere i will be able to watch this on demand as it airs? Im in college rn and dont have cable.
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If you're in the US then episodes will probably be uploaded for streaming on the PBS site the night of or next day.

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/watch/

How To Watch
Watch The Vietnam War anywhere! Beginning on September 17, the series will broadcast on your local PBS station, and will be available for streaming on the web (desktop or mobile) and PBS apps for smartphones, tablets, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Choose from English, Spanish-language, and Vietnamese-language.
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Of course, if you're close to a broadcasting PBS station, then rabbit ears will get you PBS.
 
S

Spike Spiegel

Member
Some new articles from today and yesterday:

Variety: Ken Burns' ‘Vietnam War' Sparks International Interest
Premiering Sunday on PBS, ”The Vietnam War," is drawing significant international attention — in the nation transformed by the war, but also far from Southeast Asia and the United States. It has already been licensed by 21 broadcasters in 43 countries, the most ever for a Burns film ahead of its debut. Arte in France and Germany, RTE in Ireland, and the BBC in the U.K. will all premiere the 10-hour international cut of the series within a week of the full, 18-hour U.S. version's debut on PBS. More...
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Mother Jones: The People We Forget When We Remember the Vietnam War
When filmmaker Lynn Novick signed on to co-direct The Vietnam War, the new 10-part, 18-hour PBS documentary, with Ken Burns, she advocated incorporating a large dose of Vietnamese perspective into the project. Novick—who, at 55, came of age in the war's aftermath—had long sensed that the United States' failure in the conflict hinged in part on our country's ignorance about the Vietnamese and their priorities. ”What was at stake for them? Who were they?" Novick says. ”These are questions that we've never really, as a society, been able to understand."

[...]

The resulting work gives more airtime than Hollywood ever has to everyday Vietnamese people whose lives were upended by the conflict. We hear a Viet Cong soldier speak of his astonishment at seeing Americans weep for their dead with the same despondency his countrymen had, and North Vietnamese veterans discuss the Hue massacre, the killing of 2,800 pro-Saigon South Vietnamese—a devastation the Vietnamese government has yet to acknowledge.

Novick and Burns arranged for the film's translation into Vietnamese, ensured web access via PBS, and held public screenings in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City over the summer. I spoke to Novick about the process of making the film, and the reaction from an overseas audience with a very different public memory of the war. More...
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The Guardian: Ken Burns: How Vietnam War sowed the seeds of a divided America
Ken Burns surveyed the audience at the Kennedy Center in Washington and asked that anyone who served in the Vietnam war stand up. To prolonged applause dozens rose, among them Senator John McCain and former secretary of state John Kerry. Then Burns asked everyone who had protested against the war to stand up too. Veterans including McCain joined the applause as they did so.

Then, spontaneously, some members of the two groups reached across the stalls and shook hands. Burns said he ”couldn't tell the difference" between them and expressed hope that this is how reconciliation begins.

”I thought that was kind of nice," said Jim Greene, 72, who went to Vietnam in 1966 as a tank commander in the 2nd marine division. ”Time heals most wounds."

The gathering last Tuesday night went on to watch a 45-minute preview of The Vietnam War, a 10-part, 18-hour documentary about what Burns and his co-director Lynn Novick call the most important event in American history since the second world war. More...
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At the screening McCain reportedly asked to be shown "their story," referring to the North Vietnamese.

And if anyone overseas wants to share information on when and where to watch, please feel free.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
Chichikov said:
He gives me vibes of someone who try to carefully gauge if you're okay with a white person saying n-word.
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Here's a Foote quote for you:

I'm for the Confederate flag always and forever. Many among the finest people this country has ever produced died in that war. To take it and call it a symbol of evil is a misrepresentation.
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And he was apparently very upset that racists "misused" the confederate flag during the 1960s.
 
P

Pixieking

Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
And he was apparently very upset that racists "misused" the confederate flag during the 1960s.
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I think Foote was the purest incarnation of "Confederate Pride" - without explicit racism, but not acknowledging the implicit racism. I also think he is what a lot of people imagine when someone says "Civil War re-enactor" or "People who want to acknowledge the history of the South". Whether that's because of how famous he became through the Ken Burns documentary, or because he so perfectly encapsulates the image of the noble soft-spoken Southern Gentleman archetype, I'm not sure.
 
S

Spike Spiegel

Member
Tonight's episode:

eLGb1Bi.jpg


Episode 01. "Déjà Vu" (1858-1961)
After a long and brutal war, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. With the Cold War intensifying, Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva. Communists in the north aim to reunify the country, while America supports Ngo Dinh Diem's untested regime in the south.
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EDIT: Watch the episode online @ PBS.org
 
facetheslayer92

facetheslayer92

Member
Oh shit motherfuckers, it's finally fucking here. Can't wait, the last Ken Burns documentary I watched was Dust Bowl five years ago and that was 10/10. Vietnam could be even better.
 
L

Llyranor

Member
CrazyDude said:
So how is Ho Chi Minh viewed by history?
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I don't think he is as viewed as negatively as other communist leaders. For starters, he didn't live through the end of the Vietnam War, so he didn't have to opportunity to kill millions of his people. Second (however you agree or disagree with his methods), he had been petitioning for the independence of Vietnam since the WW1 era, so he has been consistent in his vision of a free Vietnam rather than a specifically communist Vietnam.

To add context:
1) His petition for independence post-WW1 was worded after Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
2) The Viet Minh were an independence movement formed during WW2 (from the Japanese, and then from the French) and supported by the US
3) After WW2, the Vietnamese declaration of independence actually borrowed and quoted from the US' own declaration
4) Ho Chi Minh wrote to Truman:
We ask what has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.
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5) During the First Indochina War against France, the US stayed neutral and eventually supported the French (once China became communist - fearing a communist Asia). Curiously, Eisenhower said in 1953:
Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula would be scarcely defensible- and tin and tungsten we so greatly value from that area would cease coming... All of that weakening position around there is very ominous for the United States, because finally if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. That is what the French are doing...

So, when the United States votes $400 million to help that war, we are not voting for a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance for the United States of America- our security, our power and ability to get certain things from the riches of South East Asia.
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6) The Geneva Accords of 1954 split the country in two. The agreement was for an election for a unified Vietnam by 1956.
7) The election never took place. South Vietnam did not agree with the Accords.
8) Eisenhower also wrote:
I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather then Chief of State Bao Dai.
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Ho Chi Minh fought the Japanese, then the French for independence. An election was stopped from happening because the results would have not agreed with the interests of the US or the people in power in South Vietnam. I personally believe he is a flawed character who just wanted freedom for his nation and didn't want it to be the puppet of yet another foreign power, no matter the cost.
 
K

kaskade

Member
I don't know much about the Vietnam war so I need to check this out. Trent and Atticus doing the soundtrack is a nice bonus too.
 
N

NR1

Member
Watching now too, but I will finish watching on Blu-ray when Amazon delivers it on Tuesday. Very interesting watch thus far. The War is Ken Burns greats series so far, IMO.
 
A

admiraltaftbar

Member
Had to stop watching after an hour. I love Ken Burns documentaries but this one is just too brutal and sad for me. I want to eventually watch it but I think it's going to have to be something I watch in small chunks.
 
P

Poindexter

Member
What a great first episode. I love how much time they spent on the Vietnamese background and POV. I hope it doesn't fade much as the American part of the war now comes in.
 
A

ascii42

Member
admiraltaftbar said:
Had to stop watching after an hour. I love Ken Burns documentaries but this one is just too brutal and sad for me. I want to eventually watch it but I think it's going to have to be something I watch in small chunks.
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Yeah, it'd be pretty tough watching this every night.
 
B

beelzebozo

Jealous Bastard
Poindexter said:
What a great first episode. I love how much time they spent on the Vietnamese background and POV. I hope it doesn't fade much as the American part of the war now comes in.
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interviews with burns and novick indicate the vietnamese voices play a huge part in the entire project, fwiw.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Is this playing on any channel accessible by PS VUE's base package?

Edit: Never mind I saw the above!
 
L

Laekon

Member
Seems to be time locked on my Roku as there is a listing but no episodes. I'm in So Cal. They do have listings for multiple versions, broadcast, explicit, Spanish, etc.
 
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